Read part 1 , part 2, and part 3 of The farmhouse. With this final chapter, my ghost (?) story finally comes to an end.

“And give Noah our love,” said Mom. “He’s not still seeing that guy, is he?”

“He dumped him over the summer.” The call was finally winding down and Kendra didn’t want to prolong it with details about Noah’s love life, which was almost as pathetic as hers.

“That’s good,” said Mom. “He needs someone who actually makes money.”

“Mom!” Kendra would have rolled her eyes even if Mom could see her face. She knew Sam was around the corner in the kitchen, her book cracked in half on the table, and she didn’t want her to overhear.

“I’m just being realistic,” said Mom. “The academic life isn’t cheap, believe me.” After an almost imperceptible pause, she said she had to go.

Kendra tapped the red button. For the past hour, Mom had tried to convince her to come home for Christmas, but her begging, threatening, and guilt-tripping (all more or less indistinguishable from each other) hadn’t worked. Kendra could count on hearing about it for a long time, perhaps forever. It would soon be known as the year that Kendra didn’t care about the holidays. But for now, Mom would withhold gossip about their current pet topic—Tim’s wasted MBA—and pretend not to hear her daughter when she said, “I love you.” She sighed and lowered her forehead to her desk.

“You seem close.”

Sam was in the doorway. “I guess so,” said Kendra. She sat up and spun her phone in a circle. “Probably a little too close. I’m the baby.”

“The baby,” said Sam, grinning as Misty nosed between her legs and into the room, tail wagging.

Kendra swiveled her chair. “What about you? Siblings?”

“At one point.” Sam reached down to remove Misty’s collar. To Kendra’s surprise, she went on. “I don’t talk to my family anymore, you know?” With two tobacco-stained fingers, she eased a foxtail from the collar’s fibers.

“I’m sorry,” said Kendra. She never knew what to say to stuff like this, but she decided to take a stab. “At least we have other queers, right?” That seemed correct. Then she remembered that no one had visited Sam since she moved into the farmhouse. As far as she knew, Sam didn’t call anyone on the landline. Even her mail was impersonal: bills, flyers, coupons.

“I lost a lot of friends after my ex left,” Sam said, as if she knew what Kendra was thinking. She stepped down through the doorway, boots tapping the parquet wood. Kendra didn’t like that she wore them inside. Sam reached over her shoulder to set the foxtail on the desk, where it trembled in the path of the heating vent.

“Do you think you’ll ever talk again?”

“To who?” said Sam. She snapped her fingers. The dog yanked her snout from Kendra’s wastebasket and came to her. The collar clicked shut around her neck.

Kendra realized she didn’t know the ex’s name. “Her.”

Sam laughed. “Not my style. When someone loses my trust, they never get it back.” She glanced out the window with purpose, as if expecting to see something other than the orchard vibrating under low and heavy clouds. Then, almost absently: “She was a writer.”

Another personal detail! Kendra was giddy. “I totally get it,” she said. “I’m never dating another artist again. It’s just not worth the drama.”

Caroline had merely been the final straw. Before her, there was the musician who could play every instrument she picked up but couldn’t remember the names of Kendra’s friends unless she was flirting with them, Noah included. Then there was the ceramicist who had cheated on her with her therapist, though to their credit neither had realized it at the time. Others, too.

“So many types of people you’re not allowed to date,” Sam said, pointing to Kendra’s phone. She meant what Mom had said about Noah’s old boyfriend. Jerome, who worked at a call center and had two roommates. “Seems kinda limiting.”

Kendra couldn’t tell if she was being teased. “I just know what I don’t like.”

“Of course you do.” Sam directed a puff of air at the desk, whisking the foxtail away.

Kendra poured them both a double. “Usually my family goes somewhere for Christmas,” she said.

“Me, too,” said Sam. “Last year, we went down to Arizona. Misty loved it. When she rolled in the sand, she looked like a sugar donut.”

Kendra laughed. “I love Christmas traditions. They’re so cozy.” At her elbow, her phone lit up. Another text from Mom. It was a photo of Dad and Tim decorating the tree in “ugly” sweaters from Target. She turned off her notifications.

Sam eyed her phone. “Does your family have any traditions?” she asked.

“Not really,” said Kendra. “You know, other than the regular ones. The tree and presents and stuff.”

“What about ghost stories? Those are pretty traditional.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” said Kendra. “That doesn’t seem very cozy. Making up stories to scare each other.”

“What if they’re not made up?” Sam tipped her head to empty her glass in one big swallow.

Kendra laughed. “You believe in ghosts?”

Sam wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “You don’t?”

“Well,” said Kendra. Of course she didn’t.

“Not, like, white-sheet ghosts that go boo! I think a ghost is more of a feeling. What happens when you notice a place is missing something. But in being noticed, the missing thing becomes a presence. You know?”

Butches could be so corny. “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Kendra said. She imagined the face Noah would make if he were here.

Grinning, Sam tapped her pockets for a lighter. “Be right back,” she said, heading for the porch.

Kendra opened her phone. Silenced Cyte notifications wiggled for her attention, but she opened her Contacts instead. She felt the urge to call someone, though she didn’t know who. Not Mom. Not Noah. She scrolled, waiting for a name to capture her attention. The letters swam on the screen, then went dark.

Sam was behind her, covering her eyes. Now that she was close, the flower hidden inside her leather and tobacco scent revealed itself with a flourish: geranium. Their laughter filled the kitchen. When Sam pulled her hands away, Kendra saw that Misty was circling the dining table, panting, her ears back against her head.

When Kendra got back from the airport, the river fog was still thick on the interstate. “No rain forecast for tonight,” said the man on the radio, “but Santa’s really going to need Rudolph’s help to make it through this cloud cover.”

Though the farmhouse was still dark, Kendra knew Sam was awake. She had heard her throwing up in the bathroom while she was in the kitchen, pouring whiskey in her coffee—just a little, enough to drive Noah to the airport. Clutching the gift-wrapped box Noah had given her, she tiptoed to her room and got back into bed, praying she wouldn’t need to get up again for a few more hours.

Your Life, Your Content. Though she and Noah had stopped at a gas station, a Starbucks, and of course the airport, one of the most surveilled locations in the tristate area, nothing much was happening on Cyte yet. Despite having promised herself she wouldn’t look at any new videos of Sam, she was disappointed not to find any in her feed.

“So then she told me that I thought I was too good for her,” said Kendra. Instead of waiting for Sam’s invitation, she had gotten started on their nightcap without her. By the time Sam joined her at the kitchen table, she already had the pleasantly dizzy feeling that comes from drinking on an empty stomach.

“Oh, yeah?” said Sam.

Was she being sarcastic? Sam seemed tired this evening, almost on edge. But with the help of another drink, Kendra rejected the embarrassment encroaching on her buzz. If she could listen to Sam talk about her shitty ex, the woman who had broken her heart and run out on her, she could do the same for Kendra. “Yes!” she cried. “She really did. But then—you’re not going to believe this—she said that I was right. That I was too good for her.”

Sam had taken off her sweatshirt. Underneath was the masculine version of the white tank top that Kendra was wearing. “Well,” she said, “did you think you were too good for her?”

Why was Sam being so hostile? Why was it making Kendra blush? “I mean, like, yeah I grew up in a nice house with nice parents,” she admitted. “No one hit me. I don’t have a sad coming out story. What am I supposed to do? Pretend I’m not who I am?”

Sam frowned.

“What?” demanded Kendra. She felt weightless, as if the only thing keeping her from floating away was the pressure of Sam’s boot against the leg of her chair. “Just because my life is easier my ex can do whatever she wants?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Kendra’s head started to hurt. How could Sam be taking Caroline’s side? She had to make her understand. “Look,” Kendra said, pulling out her phone. “Just look and see who’s better than who.”

She opened Cyte, rapidly navigating through the user interface. She had only watched the video once, but she remembered the thumbnail vividly: the front door of their old apartment, the first few steps of the stairway, Caroline’s arm around the chubby girl with the bangs. When she found it, she looked up to confirm that Sam was watching before she pressed play.

The thumbnail came to life. The chubby girl was trying to go up the stairs, toward the camera, but Caroline had taken her hand, pinned her to the wall, kissed her in the pink light of the pull-chain lamp.

The phone shook in Kendra’s hand. Caroline had known about the camera. She had installed it herself when the old one broke. Nothing about this video—the night out when Kendra was on a trip with her family, the chubby girl, the kiss—had been a mistake or lapse of judgment. She had done it on purpose. Even now, months later, watching it returned Kendra to the deepest fury of her life.

Suddenly the app refreshed. The next video to load was another one Kendra had seen before. She locked the screen as fast as she could, but it was too late. Sam had already recognized the farmhouse kitchen, her own body, the orchard in the dark window.

“What the fuck,” said Sam.

“I’m sorry,” said Kendra. Her head was pounding now.

“What the fuck!”

“Wait—”

Sam got to her feet, shaking Kendra’s hand off her arm. At her bedroom door, she turned, as if to say something else. But she was just waiting for Misty to come inside before closing and locking the door behind her.

When Kendra woke up, she was in her bed. It was dark, but she could see the orchard waving silently in the windows. She didn’t remember how she’d gotten there, or when.

She looked down the length of her body, past the foot of her bed and her desk chair, to the bedroom door. It was open. Inside the black rectangle, someone was standing. They were looking at her.

Kendra could hear her eyes blink. When she opened her lips, they cracked like cellophane. Her mouth was dry and sour. She remembered the gin in her night stand. She tried to say something, but nothing came out.

And so, for a long time, she didn’t move. They didn’t, either.

When Kendra woke up on Christmas morning, the sun was warming her windows. They held the orchard, now motionless, as if it were a portrait hanging on her wall. The door was closed. She got out of bed and went to her bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time.

When she was finished, she checked the drawer of her night stand. There was no gin bottle; she ran out last week, she remembered. She went to the kitchen. The glasses and a half-empty pack of cigarettes were on the table. Next to them, the whiskey bottle was almost a quarter full. Sam’s bedroom door was still closed.

The bottle under her arm, Kendra tiptoed back to her bed and opened her phone. Already there were Christmas texts. Miss ya, bean, from Dad. merry christmas to you and mr. girlfriend! from Noah. Nothing from Mom.

Head still pounding, Kendra put down her phone and picked up a book. She stared down at the meaningless words, suppressing her nausea with slow, deep breaths and small sips of whiskey.

The patch of sunlight was dappling her blankets when she finally gave in. This late in the morning, there were dozens of videos in her Cyte feed. Her eyes watering, she watched all of them at least twice, poring over every face whether she recognized it or not. But there was nothing new from last night, from any of the farmhouse cameras.

Cranking the wheel, Noah pulled out onto the highway. “Bye-bye, Mr. Girlfriend,” he said to the rearview.

Kendra rubbed her thumb over her phone’s flat, black face. It was dead. Behind her, the back seat was crammed with boxes and shopping bags. This would be their only trip. It was easier to leave most of her furniture behind at the farmhouse. She’d get more when she found her own place.

It didn’t take them long to get everything inside, though both of them moved slowly, trapped in their respective hangovers. When they were finished, Noah joined Kendra on the couch with his weed tray. He liked having her at his place, but he didn’t understand why she’d left the farmhouse. “Because she looked at you?” he asked again, tapping the grinder on the coffee table. Kendra hadn’t seen the point in telling him about the cameras.

They spent the afternoon watching reality TV and eating unseasoned popcorn. For dinner, they opened a bottle of wine. After his second glass, Noah went to bed.

Kendra plugged in her charger next to the couch and wrapped herself in Noah’s spare comforter. She held her phone in her hands, waiting. It took a long time for it to warm, but she wasn’t impatient. She wished it would take longer, in fact. She wanted to put her phone down and fall asleep and never wake up, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the screen.

Finally, the apple glowed. It took her three tries to enter her passcode correctly. When the home screen finally loaded, she thought, for a terrifying moment, that her Cyte app was gone. No, it was right there—the icon’s color had changed slightly because of an update. The tagline, however, was the same as it had always been: Your Life, Your Content.

There it was, her room at the farmhouse. Judging by the sunlight in the window, the video must have been taken within an hour of her leaving. When she tapped the thumbnail, it didn’t play. She was about to tap it again when someone suddenly entered from the kitchen. It was Sam, a stepladder under her arm. Kendra pressed her body into the couch, retracting her face a few more inches from the screen.

But she watched. Her boots heavy on the parquet wood, Sam was strolling across her bedroom floor. When she left the camera’s range, Kendra could still hear everything: her feet tapping, the stepladder clicking. Then, silence. Her thumb hovered. Was the video over?

Fast as a glitch, Sam’s body vaulted back into the frame. She had climbed the stepladder to face the camera, her face filling the screen—high forehead, heavy jaw, squinting eyes. Looking Kendra dead in the eyes, she smiled.

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